Abstract:

Successful experiments in scientific laboratories require a specialized sets of skills. The equipment, that students learn to handle, is often sensitive, expensive, dangerous, complicated or a mixture of all of those attributes. In general, lab equipment has limited accessibility. This makes the training process complicated from the organizational and didactic point of view. Learning methodologies are very limited in a classical hands-on setting, although the genre is typically regarded as most worth pursuing in science education. This is due to the fact, that lab trainings address the highest levels in the learning taxonomy and thus promise to promote the deepest understanding.

How can we bridge the gap between a promising outcome and the very limited possibilities of realization? Augmented and Virtual Reality devices are now available on the consumer market for affordable prices. Regarding smartphones and tablets, a situation where one could rely on bring-your-own-device approaches seems feasible. We thus looked to bridge the gap between classical hands-on experiments and theoretical treatment using this immersive technology to create two hybrid settings for lab training.

The first setting makes use of tablets for augmentation. It is intended for use in an undergraduate laboratory experiment at a university. It's didactic design, however, is in no way limited to this. We have created a real labwork setup in the field of physical optics consisting of a light source, filters, apertures, lenses, beamsplitters, camera and so on. It's intention is to provide the possibility to discover the resolution limit of a microscope and related physics. The standard procedure would be to provide written instructions and background information together with measurement tasks on a couple of pages. After having prepared with this written manual, students are quickly briefed about the handling by an instructor on site and then perform the experiment, concluded by a written report. We have noticed that the gap between preparation with a manual and working with the real setup can be quite large. Thus we have created a learning app using augmentation in two possible modes. In preparation mode, students can literally project the real lab setup onto their kitchen desk and explore the functionality of the components in a virtual way. Vice versa, the app provides additional physical background augmented on the real setup in "lab companion mode" when the actual experiment is taken.

The second setting emulates a clean room environment. When qualifying future microstructure technology specialists, this is an extremely important aspect of training. However, due to the enormous cost of the machinery, training hours are expensive. We have thus aimed for a solution similar to a flight simulator for pilots which gives the first-time real-world user the certitude of many training hours. Our Virtual Cleanroom runs on a standard Oculus Quest VR headset. We have taken particular care to realistically mimic every step of handling a combined scanning electron microscopy / focused ion beam device starting by venting the sample chamber and loading a sample. A realistic model was created to emulate the special image acquisition process using the rendering capabilities of the Unity engine. Users find a realistic yet didactically optimized user interface for interacting with the machine and are accompanied by a virtual assistant.

Keywords:

AR/VR, Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, Physics.